261–270 of 292 posts
My best argument for UBI is, “I’d love to be able to work on F/OSS full time.” Kudos for making it a reality. It may be scratching a personal itch, but the positive externalities to society are real.
Who would be a garbage man or do construction with UBI?
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With respect to 1,2,3. People make some pretty bad decisions. And people like to trick other people into making bad decision. I didn't think this was controversial. Why is this relevant to UBI? One of the benefits of UBI is that it allows us to get rid of the welfare system. However, if people are tricked into giving away their money OR if they spend all of their money on non-food items, we now have to decide if they…
As you say, there will be cases like this. Laws can provide for them to be declared incompetent and to appoint a guardian who would be responsible for distributing their UBI funds. If it’s necessary to institutionalize them, their UBI would go to that institution for the duration.
My best argument for UBI is, “I’d love to be able to work on F/OSS full time.” Kudos for making it a reality. It may be scratching a personal itch, but the positive externalities to society are real.
Yeah, it's the modern version of a minor landed gentleman who can pursue his interests. It's how we got science. Sadly, the best argument against UBI is that vast, vast majority of people will not be working full time on F/OSS or quite possible anything else.
Nah, that's called rolling in it. Not UBI.
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With respect to 1,2,3. People make some pretty bad decisions. And people like to trick other people into making bad decision. I didn't think this was controversial. Why is this relevant to UBI? One of the benefits of UBI is that it allows us to get rid of the welfare system. However, if people are tricked into giving away their money OR if they spend all of their money on non-food items, we now have to decide if they…
As you say, there will be cases like this. Laws can provide for them to be declared incompetent and to appoint a guardian who would be responsible for distributing their UBI funds. If it’s necessary to institutionalize them, their UBI would go to that institution for the duration.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it's the modern version of a minor landed gentleman who can pursue his interests. It's how we got science. Sadly, the best argument against UBI is that vast, vast majority of people will not be working full time on F/OSS or quite possible anything else.
If people don't work on anything once they get UBI this isn't really a problem. Currently, there are many many people who already don't do anything. They only do a little as possible to avoid getting fired OR they do periodically get fired from every job they ever hold once their employers realize they're always going to be a drain on productivity. Having these people on UBI would actually allow productivity to rise.…
As for how to pay for this, consider that central banks have printed trillions of dollars and basically handed that money to corporations, bailing them out of their debt. We live in the world of corporate welfare. We could expand the money supply and give that money to the people instead. In some ways, this is more capitalist than the alternative. Why? Because corporations who get too far into debt should die. If you give money to the people, you at least ensure that corporations will have to sell people something that they actually need/want, instead of being able to count on a corporate bailout.
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I'm sorry but 1), 2) and 3) are ridiculous. What are you basing those assumptions on ? I don't see how any of these points relate to UBI. Why would we be obligated to provide welfare to people who spend their allowance on things other than food and healthcare ? 4) is a very good point. We don't actually know what keeps our civilization running. UBI assumes that people have a natural drive to be productive, but we got…
With respect to 1,2,3. People make some pretty bad decisions. And people like to trick other people into making bad decision. I didn't think this was controversial. Why is this relevant to UBI? One of the benefits of UBI is that it allows us to get rid of the welfare system. However, if people are tricked into giving away their money OR if they spend all of their money on non-food items, we now have to decide if they…
and what about those who waste their ubi money, welfare money, and backup welfare money? we need a failsafe fund for those too!
People are free to make their own decisions. It's good to help people and lessen the blow of mistakes, but at some point, a stupid person who keeps getting tricked into wasting their money, is not very helpful to anyone around.
If you're being given free money just for existing, and you can't figure out how to keep it? I think thats your problem, not society's.
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> Money supply isn't the issue here. > If everyone has another x+12,000 dollars, the amount of money available for low income housing has strictly increased. Landlords are then in a position to raise prices proportionally. You're contradicting yourself through sloppy thinking. If everyone has another x+12,000 dollars, the money supply has increased. That's the definition of money supply. It's also a total strawman an…
You are correct; the money supply isn't an issue. However, inflation within a localized area of the economy is a thing (e.g. housing prices, health care). UBI is a transfer of money from the wealthy, who would have used it to buy filet mignon or something, to the poor, who would likely use it to buy food and shelter. One should expect the prices of food and shelter to rise, relative to other products.
I already live a better, more comfortable life than any Roman emperor ever did. We have the means to ensure that no one in our society suffers in destitution, by a vast margin, and that margin increases continuously as automation of menial work proceeds over time.
Not doing so because it might not be "optimally efficient" according to some arbitrary metric is inhuman.
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Maybe. In a world of increasing automation (explosive in the last 15 years) there's not much value in training for anything less than medicine or engineering. And US has 30 million flipping burgers. When that's automated too, there's not many that could retrain to be engineers. And we don't need 30M more engineers anyway. That's why UBI is a hot topic. Its a way out of a collapse.
Automation has not been explosive in the last 15 years, I'm not sure why you think this. Productivity growth (the measure of increasing automation) has been the lowest its been in decades, see here: https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user330... As for whether we need 30 million engineers, thats entirely up to what we want to be as a society. If you don't think we can come up with engineering work fo…
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Right now those people get food stamps and welfare
Wow, talk about living in a bubble. Do you really think that a person who runs out of money can just go and get more from the government?